Imagination is the air of mind.
It matters not how long we live but how.
My favoured temple is an humble heart.
Doubt is the shadow of truth.
Kindness is wisdom. There is none in life But needs it and may learn.
For as nightingales do upon glow-worms feed, So poets live upon the living light.
Nature means Necessity.
The course of Nature seems a course of Death, And nothingness the whole substantial thing.
Corruption springs from light: ’tis one same power Creates, preserves, destroys; matter whereon It works, on e’er self-transmutative form, Common to now the living, now the dead.
Surely the stars are images of love.
It is no great misfortune to oblige ungrateful people, but an unsupportable one to be forced to be under an obligation to a scoundrel.
See the gold sunshine patching, And streaming and streaking across The gray-green oaks; and catching, By its soft brown beard, the moss.
See the sun! God’s crest upon His azure shield, the Heavens.
The poet’s pen is the true divining rod Which trembles towards the inner founts of feeling; Bringing to light and use, else hid from all, The many sweet clear sources which we have of good and beauty in our own deep bosoms; And marks the variations of all mind As does the needle.
A poet not in love is out at sea; He must have a lay-figure.
He hath no power that hath not power to use.
What are ye orbs? The words of God? the Scriptures of the skies?
Wan night, the shadow goer, came stepping in.
Necessity, like electricity, is in ourselves and all things, and no more without us than within us.
When night hath set her silver lamp high, Then is the time for study.